The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity - Dorothy Parker
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WD does the almost impossible
WHEN WE SAID that there were signs of spring, little did we know it was contagious. Now word has hit that Western Digital is bucking the computer industry trend and has made money.
Yes, in its Q3, WD brought in $1.6 Billion and made a profit of $50 Million, excluding a few charges. This amounts to 22 cents per share, not enough to buy that new S-Class with, but if you have 4 shares, it is (regular size) candy bar time!
WD has been on a capacity tear lately, with the only 2TB drives on the market, and it is near the lead on everything else. This means it can charge premium prices, and that is good for any company. Add in dipping its toes into the SSD market, and WD has a bright future ahead.
If you want all the details, you can listen to the conference call, and read all the financials in a PDF. Enjoy. µ
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They deserve to be selling more drives! After Seagate's recent performances, in compatibility, reliability, and customer service, it may be that WD will soon be the only maker of reliable hard disks left!
I've been a loyal Western Digital customer since the company first rolled out their 5400RPM drives.
Today I just shipped out my first RMA with the company, a Western Digital MyBook Home Edition External HDD.
Problem was the firmware update procedure. WD has to work on the way users update the firmware on their drives. I do consider it as pointless to come up with such convoluted directions in upgrading firmware especially on this massive 1TB HDD.
Ah well, I'll wait for my new replacement to come next week. I look forward to resuming a positive experience with the company (depending or not I can successfully recover my lost data). =(
Did a count. We have 6 WD drives bought over the last year. All running happily, as are 3 Seagate laptop drives bought over a similar period.
The last bad period for drives we had was back in the IBM DeathStar days. Before that we had 3 of 5 Seagates die in 6 months once. I blame that batch on overheating, so it might pay you to look at the airflow around your drives.
I have had two WD drives fail in less than a year. Considering that I have never had a hard drive fail since 1990 other than a lightning strike casualty that also blew pieces out my motherboard, I am a bit concerned with WD.
I was sent replacements, but I still wonder if they are starting to cut some corners. Perhaps it is somehow my own fault since I started using rubber mounted washers. I have been warned that these can reduce the life of hard drives because of excessive physical movement of the drive.
All I can say is that my external back up with Acronis Trueimage has saved me more than once, and nothing can guarantee that your data is safe other than periodic backups.